There’s a scene you’ve probably seen in the movies where the power to a major metropolis is cut, and the lights on the skyscrapers systematically and sequentially shut down. That’s what’s happening to America, albeit at a slower pace. But not in slow motion.

Airlines are eliminating flights, placing surcharges on bags and free tickets (yes, that’s an oxymoron), and I’ve heard rumblings that weighing passengers is being considered, as we are morphed from unique sentient beings into freight. As we’re f’d by the price of the two f’s (food and fuel), lifestyles are changing for all but the super-rich, and even though they’ve got the cushion to continue to live as they have, they’re not immune from having to deal with lower corporate profits and quite probably lower end of year bonuses. My hankie remains dry while considering their plight.

Any self-respecting extra-terrestrial dispassionately monitoring our planet sees a perfect storm of indeterminate nature and length brewing, unless of course, they’ve long since tamed chaos theory, in which case they know how things will play out. If they do, I respectfully request that they direct one of their supercomputers to e-mail us a printout of their projections.

These documents can be sent to lk@loosekannon.com. Anything sent to D.C. would be a waste of time and bandwidth.

Questions:

How quickly will we be lulled into a catatonic stupor by Saudi promises of increased oil output?

Now that we’ve alarmed their obscenely wealthy princes by cutting down on our consumption in the face of budget busting prices, are we going to stick our heads back in the Arabian sand and put our urgency to fund and implement alternative sources of energy on the back burner?

Are we going to drill closer to home instead of innovate? And if we’re going to pay the price of drilling, can we use an equal amount of currency to find a way to harness the energies of the sun, the seas, and the subterranean so that we’re not compromised politically and ethically by our need for fossil fuel from people who don’t much care for us?

Are we that easy to manipulate?

Are we as intellectually lazy as we’ve shown ourselves to be over the last 8 years, voting for a friendly fella whose idea of research in college was finding out which New Haven 7-Eleven carried Heineken by the case?

Are we ready to wake up?

The Dems are making a huge mistake entertaining ideas about going forward with what’s known as The Fairness Doctrine. The purpose of said doctrine is to try to even out the bias of the content currently heard on political talk radio. Think Rush, Sean, Laura, Levin, and The Salem Radio Network crew, among others. All right wing, all masters of the medium. The left’s got no one with that kind of national penetration, with maybe Randi Rhodes having the knowledge and radio chops to compete.

The criteria for getting air time and national syndication is pretty simple: attract listeners. Radio is a business. There’s nothing inherent in the material that accounts for the overwhelming advantage of the right. They’re just better at presenting their slant on things in more entertaining and captivating ways.

I know Limbaugh’s twisting the truth like a baker making pretzels, and Hannity sounds way too smart to believe the lowest common denominator “you’re a great American” pablum he’s dispersing, but they, along with their compatriots, have found a groove that’s working so there’s no reason to stop the music, as far as they or the stations they’re on are concerned.

The Dem’s mistake is trying to legislate talent under the guise of legislating equal time to polarized points of view. What they should be doing is taking Air America and doing with it what Microsoft should do with Vista: junk it and come up with something compelling that justifies its own existence.

It’s as if they’re admitting defeat in the talk radio space and blaming it on the content rather than the presentation of the content. If the polls on the upcoming presidential election and the results of the recent special congressional elections are any indication, the Dems are on the winning side of the policy debate. And since these days more Americans get their news from talk radio than from traditional print media, the moderate-left politicos need to see the airwaves as a meritocracy they’ve got to compete in more effectively. In this case, like it or not, the messenger is as (if not more) important than the message conveyed

I have little else but disdain for Rush’s positions, but he’s a hoot to listen to. The left needs equally attractive on-air characters, not legislation that’s the air-wave equivalent of book burning.

OK, maybe not every single weekend as originally intended, but when the opportunity arises I’ll pass along some material that moves me as I continue to make part of my living creating and listening to music for fun and profit.

The Man In Me by Rodney Crowell. Crowell is a major thinker who uses instrumentation that cause his records to be filed in the country category. The lyrics are a ruthless and eloquent self-examination/dressing down and a guitar riff straight out of Duane Eddy fills in the blanks.

Re-Ron, by Gil Scott-Heron. Rewind to when rappers placed a premium on urgency and literacy, and dealt with matters far more noble than misogyny and the Benjamins. Someone very close to me mixed the record.

Handlebars by Flobots. The first 30 seconds provoked the question “what is this crap?” but by the end I knew it was anything but. Hi IQ and social consciousness that captures the complexity of day to day existence in 2008 meets infectious production.

Hate Me by Blue October. More brutal self-examination and confession that makes the spate of current books by addicts sharing war stories seem like child’s play. First time I heard it I had to pull off a highway because I had never been faced with anything that riveting framed so well, and I couldn’t handle the wheel and listen at the same time. And I’m not half bad at multi-tasking.

Obama is proposing raising taxes on people making over 250K/year. In many parts of the country that’s not even close to rich, but in the industrial swing states it sounds rich to the voters he’s got to collar, so let’s let that go for now.

He’s also proposing raising the capital gains tax. Sounds good to that same constituency but it’s a big mistake. Here’s what happens:

1. Capital gains tax rate rises.

2. A wave of selling prior to and in anticipation of the tax increase occurs, and new investment slows down markedly.

3. The value of 401K’s and IRA’s drop.

4. Upon seeing their monthly statements, working class voters turn on Barack, while cutting down even more on discretionary spending.

5. The spending cutbacks perpetuate the recession that Bush and McCain swear we’re not in. What a pair of Bozos.

What O should do is what he did towards the end of the primaries when he called out Hillary and McCain on their cynical calls for a gas tax holiday, which would have done nothing to ease the pain but might have fooled some of the people some of the time. He’s got to explain, in clear terms, the damage that a higher cap gains tax would do, even though, at first glance, it appears to be a gesture to the working men/women of the country. And he’s got to be big enough to reverse himself, as he’s already come out in favor of raising the cap gains bite.

O’s got to be the go to guy for the truth. If he ends up pandering, he loses some of the luster he’s earned.

End of story.

A bit off the beaten path this morning.

When I was a kid cars weren’t required to have seat belts as standard equipment. Cigarettes didn’t have a surgeon general’s warning on them. Looking back it’s clear that a combination of national denial and economic special interest groups produced a populace that, on a constant basis, placed itself in danger of shortening their own lives.

Fortunately, in two rare instances of sane, large scale change, activists, who shockingly included government officials and agencies, caused car and tobacco companies to adapt to the irrefutable evidence that their idea of safe, wasn’t. Cutting corners was also cutting down on lifespans.

I have little doubt that within 25 years the use of cell phones placed directly against the ear, as well as the proliferation of cell phone towers and the waves they propogate, are going to be seen as a danger more pervasive and deadly than the lack of car restraints and 2 packs a day ever were. And the victims are going to be all of us, not just vehicle occupants and nicotine freaks. Babies, kids, and the elderly won’t be immune even though they’re not chronic users, although they may suffer less than folks we all know who live with a cell glued to their earlobes. The waves are bombarding the twins and their grandparents, with microwaves from both phones and towers causing physiological cellular disruption.

Studies in European countries have gone beyond the fluff pieces on show’s like Larry King, but nothing has yet emerged that equals the vociferous outcry that led to seat belts as a given for every passenger and the recognition of cigarettes as a death accelerant.

It doesn’t take a radical conspiracy theorist to picture the pressure being put on by the major cell carriers to hinder scientific studies, whether public or private, and impeding the public dissemination of the results of those studies that manage to get off the ground.

Maybe Ralph Nadar, instead of playing a role in the elation of dangerous knuckleheads, could revert back to being the incredibly effective consumer advocate that made him a hero, prior to his constant misreading of the political landscape.

Cell phones aren’t going away any time soon, so to minimize the damage, buy your loved ones, including yourself, a belt holster no matter how nerdy it looks, as well as a corded, not cordless, earpiece. It may temporarily feed the killer beast, as most of that gear is available from the cell manufacturers and carriers themselves, but it’s better than sitting around waiting for a brain tumor. No joke.

Didn’t know the man. Knew his work.

Fair and balanced is what he arrived at a result of an ethical pursuit of the truth. “Fair and balanced” as a shallow lip service slogan is a sad irony and a poor reflection of our American culture. His not being here to ask the questions he’d ask, in the manner and sequence he’d ask them, remaining both civil and tenacious while methodically peeling the layers off the onion, will let many a candidate off many a hook, this year and in the years to come.

Others who knew him will mourn the man. I’m saddened that big decisions, made by and affecting hundreds of millions of people, will have to be made without his inquisitiveness and input.

Rest in peace, Mr. Russert. And this Sunday morning, if you’re so inclined, ask God, if there is one, why.

Heard a snippet of news concerning a partial blackout in Washington D.C. It’s probably not widespread enough, nor will it last long enough, to do some real damage, which, paradoxically, might also do a world of good.

A few quick observations:

1. With any luck, the mint was in the outage zone so that, temporarily at least, it could stop churning out dollars that dilute the value of the ones you’ve got in your wallet.

2. Like a socket with no juice flowing to or through it, Washington exudes the appearance of power, yet is impotent.

3. With traffic lights out, gridlock ensued, drivers had the keen insight to turn off their engines, and the national demand for gasoline diminished just a bit, thereby causing a dip in the price of oil.

4. Hopefully the massive, steel-reinforced concrete doors that seal Cheney’s bunker have no backup generator, and he was tucked in for the night and still sleeping soundly when the bunker went off the grid.

An old, stale riddle goes something like this: “what does a New Yorker make for dinner?” and the answer is “a phone call.” The food, from any number of cuisines and nationalities, usually arrives within 30 minutes or less.

A Chinese meal that cost $26.85 last week costs $33.40 this week. Same joint, same items, same quality. That’s the base upon which the tip (which is discretionary), and the tax (which is not) is calculated. So the tax is higher, and the tip can be as well, unless, and nothing new here, it’s the folks on the bottom rung whose wages remain stagnant while prices rise.

Pull the calculator out and that comes to a ferocious bump of over 24%. From one week to the next. And the tax increase puts the out of pocket bump up more than that. The price of rice, which used to be thrown in as an accompanying afterthought, has skyrocketed for the restaurants (see chart below), and the gas that’s used to power the delivery vehicles, which around here are old and most likely inefficient cars, has taken a moon shot as well.

Weekly Price Chart For Rice

Which is going to lead me to order far less frequently, as the sticker shock was, well, shocking. I’m probably not the only one who’s going to react that way, so revenues for the restaurant won’t go up, and may well decrease.

This is a lose-lose situation for the consumer and the retailer. And Bush and McCain, in true Orwellian style, must believe that if they speak well of the economy frequently and vociferously, their blind conviction alone will make it so.

If this piece sounds a bit more sober and less flippant than the usual LK fare, it’s because there’s absolutely nothing funny about it. People are hurting and are going to continue to hurt.

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: Paul Volcker, the man who, as Federal Reserve chairman, put out the last inflationary fire, has endorsed and hopefully is advising Senator Obama, and together with the rest of Obama’s team had best come out with a painful but tolerable plan (as Volcker did in the early ’80’s) to right this extremely shaky ship.

It’s also been brought to my attention that the example used (delivered Chinese food) could be perceived as elitist and plays into the criticism that’s already been leveled at Senator Obama. He should use the price of gas, milk, and war as examples of the problem, which is what I’m sure he and his brain trust are planning to do.

And he still needs to come out with specific plans of action in order to garner the support of swing state voters , without whom his transformational visions have little chance of being realized.